


It's Over

by Emby_M



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Jack becomes a writer, Jack writes down the story of Red Dead, Jack's Life After Killing Ross, Mourning, Post-RDR1, Train-hopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 23:19:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18509116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emby_M/pseuds/Emby_M
Summary: It smells like home, still. Like if he turned the corner, Momma would be there, making dinner. Pa would be at her shoulder, laughing about how it could probably kill him but drooling nonetheless.There's nothing.-After killing Ross, Jack receives a letter and starts the rest of his life.





	It's Over

Jack Marston throws the gun he shot Ross with in the river.

It's over, his pa's voice rings in his head, It's done.

It's done.

He's done.

His horse takes him back to Beecher's Hope. A quiet ride with a trusted friend, through hills and vales and all manner of scrub, until he returns, finally, to his home.

His home. The home that his parents had been so proud of. The home that his momma would look around, hand on her hips, and sigh out -- "It's ours."

"What's ours?" Jack'd say.

"This is!" She's laugh, "This whole house. The land -- it's all ours."

A letter is shoved into the doorframe when he gets there. It's sort of thick, stuck with a bunch of stamps and addressed to "The Marston Family" in a curling unfamiliar script.

He tucks it into his pocket, unlocking the door.

It smells like home, still. Like if he turned the corner, Momma would be there, making dinner. Pa would be at her shoulder, laughing about how it could probably kill him but drooling nonetheless.

There's nothing.

He sits at the kitchen table. At the head.

There's no one there now.

The house is so silent.

...

The letter.

Jack's head, once filled with words, is empty. No thoughts. Just pulls out Pa's knife, slides it under the envelope flap.

A couple sheets of good paper. Letterheads from some church. From a Reverend Swanson.

 

" _My Dear Marstons._

_Sorry I haven't been in contact. It's been a while since I've had time to sit down and write, and you know how I am. Never been one to organize my thoughts._

_I'm so sorry to hear about Karen. Yours and the Gaskill-Jackson's letters reached my door about the same day with that news. Somehow I'm comforted that she died smiling. Died happy. She wasn't the same after Sean, so full of raw pain. I can't help but think even when I helped, I was hurting her. I might've given her the idea of drowning her sorrow in hard liquor. How funny, and how cruel, that when I abandoned the drink, she only took it on more._ "

It's certainly Orville.

Ma had written to him. A good few months back. Before Jack had settled the hat on his head, swore vengeance.

" _Things are well. I have a congregation. I'm just as surprised as I'm sure you are. My misgivings in Boston are unknown here -- there is no Aggasiz family to oust me, no slopes of Beacon Hill to attend to, no lavish parties to be wrapped up in. New York, despite how it might seem, is treating me well, no matter how lonely I find myself without Simon._

_"I've found out there's an excellent scholarship program our church puts up. I know Jack is quite smart, remember him being so last time I saw you (eighteen years ago, now, since we lost so much), have got loads and loads of letters from you professing as much. It would be a full ride to Columbia, if he wrote a compelling enough essay. I know you folk prefer the Midwest, but it's such an excellent opportunity, and I'd be glad to give my recommendation to Jack. I've enclosed the application, and have already addressed them for Jack._

_Please come and visit any time. I have space in my quarters (it was intended for a whole family, but I live alone these days) to house you for a while. It would be no trouble to have you._

_Please write soon. I look forward to seeing you._

_Orville Swanson._ "

 

Jack gets on the next train he can heading East.

He grabbed the guitar. Left the fiddle there. The fiddle was Pa's through and through. Grabbed Ma's knitting needles too, and the Bible where she pressed that little flower necklace he'd made for her when he was three or four. Takes the camera -- it was his now, but it had been Arthur's. Everything else was clean underdrawers and a change of clothes. The rest would have to stay.

He hops trains -- when this one stops in Virginia, he climbs onto a cargo train and rides that car til Pennsylvania -- then from Pennsylvania he sits out on top of a train car while the conductor asks for tickets, climbs back down and settles beside a young woman about his age, and they make a deal -- they'll cover for each other, as long as he keeps the cads off while she travels, and she pretends he had a ticket too, he lost it, but they're poor mourners travelling, sir-

They have to make a deal with that conductor. What's he gonna do -- Throw an innocent eighteen year old girl from a train car? Jack parts with half a fare and gets promise they'll get to Poughkeepsie.

The two of them -- bonded, now, for the effort of it all -- climb aboard another train. She's never hopped trains before and they laugh and laugh and laugh when he tosses his stuff and her up into a boxcar and nearly falls flat on his face running after the cab that starts moving suddenly.

She lights a lantern for the two of them and he plays tunes all night -- spinning tales about the West, singing all the things that Ma and Pa used to.

In New York, she offers to stay with him, but he has to turn her down. Still, he walks her to her lodging house, owing to it being midnight, and he appreciates the small kiss she presses to his cheek, the sweet way she waves from the upstairs window to show him she's gotten in just fine.

 

Orville answers the door after the third round of knocking.

"Yes, yes!" he hisses, coming to the door, "I'm here, I'm here."

When he opens the door his brow furrows. He blinks.

"John...?" He says, quietly. And then he stares harder, and his bushy, gray eyebrows shoot upwards on his face -- "Jack! Oh hello, what- what brings you here -- how did you get to New York, when did you get in-?"

"Got your letter," Jack says, the weight of the words heavy, "It came a bit too late, I'm afraid."

"What do you- Where are..." Orville's face sags. He's much older now -- he has to be at least seventy now. A fool he could no longer be. "Oh no."

Something swells inside Jack's chest, burns his sinuses.

"Um, come inside," Orville says, opening the door and guiding him inside. There is someone sleeping on the couch already, but they move past her. Orville locks the door but it seems like he'd forget to if there wasn't that person on the couch.

"A member of the congregation," he says, by way of explaining, "I give them my home as they give me their trust."

When they are upstairs, in a modest bedroom, Orville gestures to the armchair. He himself perches on a stool.

"Your parents," he says, quietly. He knows.

"Dead," Jack says. It's the first time - he's admitted it to himself. Even in hunting down Ross, even in all his adventure, he had never sat down and admitted it to himself.

He feels... cavernous. Like the word rings in the concave of his chest and fizzles out to nothing, like a firecracker in a pond.

Orville nods, his eyes drifting slowly to the floor. "A shame."

"Yes."

"You know," Orville says. His voice -- rough, for the years on him -- takes a lift. It is not joyous. But it feels warm. "I have spent quite a number of years dealing with death. I was an army doctor -- I don't know if you remember -- and then of course I was the doctor in Dutch's gang, and now I am a doctor and a Reverend once more. I give people their last rites just about every day."

Jack nods. Orville places a hand, broad and honest, on his wrist. It is not meant as a comfort, not in the way Orville hangs his head, stares wet-eyed at Jack's ankle, but it is.

"I don't think I will ever get used to my dear ones dying."

He takes a deep breath. Just breathes, rises in his seat. For an old man, he seems hale, but the news weighs on him.

"How did they die?" He asks, quietly.

Jack rolls the words in his mouth. Feels each tooth in turn, testing the strength of the sadness against enamel.

"Pa got shot by the law," he says, finally, "Ma died of... I don't know. She just kind of fell ill and never got better. Grief."

Orville nods, slow at first, but sure.

"I think that is the only way she could have gone," he says, "I've never known a woman who loved as much as your mother."

"I miss her," he says, unbidden. Those words hang in the air, in the space of the bedroom, lit by New York City's ever-burning lights.

"Of course," Orville says. Like it was simple.

The old man stands and takes Jack's hat from his bowed head. Considers it a moment, dusts it off. "Your parents- they were people who had lost a lot. I'm sure you knew."

"Yes," he says, quietly. Orville's broad hand rests on his shoulder.

"But they were people who were loved, too. People who loved as broad and as unchanging as the Plains. They were wonderful friends."

He figured as much. Women like Sadie and Bonnie, his de facto aunties, didn't tolerate fools.

"Do you know," Orville says, quietly, "the story of this hat?"

He looks up. He does -- but he doesn't. Knows it was Uncle Arthur's.

Orville smiles. It's a small thing. Orville perches once more, on that stool.

And he traces back this story -- this story about a kid, a fourteen year old who robs two gentlemen who turn out to be thieves and conmen. A story about a kid driven mad from watching his mother die, watch his outlaw father go crazy with grief. How the boy grew up afraid of the kind of love that consumes you like that, swore it off and yet could never swear off love.

How the boy grew into a man, how that man took care of another boy, a boy who was going to be lynched in Illinois, a boy who the man hoisted above a crowd and saved from death and from himself. How the two grew so close -- not like brothers, even if people said so, but soulmates, close and bonded. How the man loved the younger, how they were lovers.

How the older man saved a girl from trafficking -- how the younger fell in love with her instantly. She had been whip-smart but she had never gotten a steady life under her -- she'd been selling her body since she was twelve and the trafficking was new and somehow worse. The older loved her deep and even, steadfast and honest. She loved him that way too. The younger and her, though -- they clicked. They fell into place, into love. There was nothing else that could've happened for them.

The younger and her -- they had a baby. But they still loved the older, of course. Depended on him, helped him wherever they could. When the younger disappered for a year, the two others mourned him -- the older taking the younger's place, helping to raise the son she'd given birth to. That girl settled a hat along the older's brow for his birthday, and he wore it every day.

How they all ran with a gang -- how they were lawless and yet free, how much they tried to protect their son from that life and never succeeded. How the gang life went belly-up, how the law edged closer and closer, how the older got sick with consumption -- incurable. How the older died protecting that little family, making sure they got out safe as the gang turned its guns inwards, shattering on the inside. The older died up on a mountaintop, that family -- his family -- having escaped.

"Uncle Arthur... did all that?" he murmurs.

Orville smiles, runs a finger over the brim of the hat. It's beaten, but still in good shape.

And he traces, too, the path that hat took, from Arthur's head to John's, to Jack's. How John had laid out everything in desperate letters, letters to the half-remembered reverend who had trained Abigail in medicine, how he had to tell someone-

How John wore that hat every day after that -- and Jack remembers that time, when Pa wore a lot of black, and so did Ma. When people asked if they were in mourning and neither of them ever said quite the same thing.

How John wore it to honor Arthur. How John wore it to love Arthur. How John wore it to remember Arthur. How it was always tied back to Abigail.

"This hat," he says, softly, "Is all of the love you've gotten. And it's all of the love the people who loved you got. It's John's love for you -- Arthur's love for him -- Abigail's love for Arthur. My fondness for Abigail. Dutch's fondness for me. Annabelle's fondness for him. On and on and on.

"Love doesn't disappear -- it builds and builds and builds. And we take our mementos from the living and we take our mementos from the dead and we clog our lives full of them so that we might never forget that love, so that we can feel it deep within ourselves. So that we know we are loved."

The tears fall unbidden. Unbidden, and light, and clean. Like fresh spring rain, dripping over his cheeks.

Jack takes the guitar from its case.

He takes the guitar, lifts it onto his knee, and plays. He plays firm and loud, without minding that there is a whole city of folk just outside that window, that there is that girl downstairs, that there is Orville here --

"I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, a poor lonesome cowboy..."

He plays, and he sings. His voice would never be as good as Pa's -- he'd never be able to do the baffling things John used to do like hum back the tones of birdsong, make little ditties from them -- but he can sing. He can sing loud enough that his parents could hear and he sings and he sings and he sings until the song is over and done, until the last note rings from his guitar into the whitewashed bedroom of a reverend, and the tears are done.

 

In the morning, Orville takes him to the barbershop, and Jack gets his hair cropped close, like he used to wear it. His face is clean shaven, and he looks somewhere between the dumb kid he remembers the day they buried Pa and the hollow man he was when he buried Ma. Jack doesn't quite recognize his reflection, but Orville smiles anyway and says he looks fit for Columbia.

Jack writes the essay in a matter of hours. Uses Orville's nice pen, writes it in a couple quick drafts. They go together to drop it off, Orville greeting people on the street and people in the offices where they drop it off and everything.

And it is a breathless couple of weeks while they wait -- while countless eyes read the thing.

Orville takes him on tours of New York -- the quiet places, the places that almost feel like home, the places where you can be alone amongst others, alone amongst loneliness.

Jack takes his camera.

Jack takes pictures. The people. The buildings.

Jack thinks of a lot of things. He's almost never thinking about the photos he takes when he takes them.

He snaps a photo of a slow curving line of grass, leading down this miles-long path into a copse of trees, and he's thinking about Uncle Hosea. They'd talked about him, him and Orville. The gentleman in the gang, he could remember Hosea's soft hands even now. The way Hosea was steady, how once a year on a particular day he would break and drink and drink with Orville, and be normal again the next day. How Hosea's touch could calm anyone down -- even Dutch.

He snaps a photo of a new building being erected, all steel and height and modernity, and he thinks about the other quiet things Orville had said about Dutch. In Jack's memory, Dutch was this half-mad trouble, this ghost that had haunted Pa, a man who had tried to take the role of father and had failed. Orville told him another story, though -- one of a man so overcome by grief that he was no longer coherent. Of a man who was nervous, always, of a man whose mind was always racing, of a man who was, under all the bravado and neuroses, a good man. A man who cared for his little family.

He takes a photo of stairs, these many stairs, and wonders about that year Pa had left. How had Uncle Arthur and Momma gotten close? He'd known, always, how much Pa loved Arthur. He wonders if there was a world where Pa didn't make it back, where Arthur was his Pa. Wonders how it all would've turned out. Wonders if Pa's silence in talking about Arthur was just as welcome for Momma, too. If talking about him was hard for both of them.

He sits in that library with the lions for a couple days straight, until his head is buzzing with words and fiction and all that.

Orville offers him a journal, and he begins to write.

He thinks he'll call it Endeavor - at first.

He thinks about it as a fine-bound volume. He thinks about the name stamped in gold on the binding. He thinks about it as a classic immediately -- this story about the West-

But no.

When that's passed, all that's left is the story.

He isn't sure where to start.

So he starts with what he knows.

John Marston.

and then -- no. To tell the whole story, you need Arthur Morgan.

And then no, you need Dutch Van Der Linde, for that-

And then no --

You need a hat.

You need a hat, and a homestead, and you need a story about the kind of love that would make you crazy.

And then Jack decides it will be called Redemption.

And he starts to write.

**Author's Note:**

> There's something really captivating about the idea that Jack writes down the story of the gang to me. That he goes to everyone who's still alive and asks them what they remember, both as a genealogical thing and as a need to share the story...  
> I think Jack is the one who finally gets out of that cycle of violence and crime. Gets into Columbia, pursues English, befriends an older Albert Mason, travels the world with the man. As much as he can, he gets a happy ending.  
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


End file.
